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It develops with considerable speed when germs get into the body through wounds in the skin or infections in the ears, lungs or urinary tract.

Those most affected are usually the very young, sick or elderly, whose defences may not be up to fighting off bacterial invasion.

Yet even the strong and healthy can be struck down if a particularly potent organism gets into their blood.

As the invading bugs swamp the body, they produce powerful toxins that start to damage cells.

Some attack the walls of small blood vessels, causing them to leak, with the circulation of blood to the major organs being stopped. As a result, there can be a dangerous drop in blood pressure.

Starved of oxygen-rich blood, the body's major organs begin to shut down one by one.

Doctors treat the deadly condition by using large doses of antibiotics to beat the bacteria and injecting fluids to bolster blood pressure.

But one of the most dangerous aspects of sepsis is that while powerful bugs are invading the body, the immune system can go into overdrive, pumping out vast quantities of proteins called cytokines.

These are supposed to help defend the body against infection. But for reasons that remain unclear, in sepsis the immune system can produce such huge quantities that they start to attack healthy tissue as well, causing widespread inflammation deep inside the body.

Scientists hope to stop this reaction using the new magnet therapy to extract damaging bacteria. They gradually remove the patient's blood and add hundreds of tiny magnetic beads.

Each bead has been coated with an antibody - a molecule designed to attract dangerous bacteria in the blood.

The blood is pumped out of the body and through a tiny tube made from a fine, mesh-like material. It is joined at the side to another identical tube that has salt water flowing through it.

in the blood, the coated beads 'lock on' to passing bacteria. An external magnet is then switched on and pulls the magnetic beads - as well as their bacterial cargo - through the mesh wall from the blood side into the salt water side.

The 'clean' blood is then pumped back into the body, while the bacteria are flushed away in the salt water.

Dr Don Ingber, who helped develop the device in Boston, said: 'It offers a potentially new weapon to fight pathogens in septic children and adults. It works simply by removing the source of the infection.'

Dr David Inwald, a specialist in paediatric intensive care at Imperial College London, said: 'This new device sounds very interesting.

'But patients would probably still be affected by the immune system response, which can last for days or weeks even when all the bugs have been cleared.'